Non-monogamy and discourses on romantic love and desire : the experiences of non-monogamous people in the Netherlands

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Non-Monogamy and Discourses on Romantic

Love and Desire

The Experiences of Non-Monogamous People in the Netherlands

MA THESIS

Vera Boesten Student ID: 11022973

Email: vera_boesten@hotmail.com Department of Sociology

Gender, Sexuality and Society - Universiteit van Amsterdam

Supervisor: Dr. Margriet van Heesch Second Reader: Dr. Marie-Louise Janssen

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2 Chapter 4: Managing Expectations in Non-Monogamous Relationships 41 4.1 An Internal Dilemma: Choosing to Feel Furious or Choosing to Be Curious? 41 4.2 Embracing Taboo Emotions: “Fake It Till You Make It” 42 4.3 “Honey, Does This Thing Right Next to My Anus Look Weird to You?” Creating

Safety Within the Relationship

45

4.4 It All Comes Down to Trust 47

4.5 Killing Expectations and Assumptions 49 4.6 Challenging Normative Assumptions of Romantic Love 50

Chapter 5: What Does Gender Have to Do With It? 52

5.1 Taking the “Right” Relationship Steps 52 5.2 Challenging or Supporting Structures of Masculinity and Femininity 53 5.3 “It Is About Confronting Your Own Shadow” 56

5.4 Conflicting Desires 57

5.5 Not Letting Stigma Get the Better of You: “Most People Truly Do Not Care” 58 5.6 Challenging Hegemonic Structures of Romantic Love While Supporting Hegemonic Structures of Gender

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Chapter 6: A Start to an Inclusive Representation of Romantic Love 61 6.1 From Holding Hands to Challenging the Norm 61 6.2 How Do Non-Monogamous People in the Netherlands Experience Romantic Love

and Desire?

62

6.3 Reflection 64

6.4 “It [Monogamy] Should Be a Choice, Not an Assumption” 65

Bibliography 67

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Preface

First of all, I would like to thank all the people who opened up to me about their experience of romantic love and desire. The way they opened up, trusted and confided in me about their personal lives and internal processes inspired me and enabled me to challenge hegemonic structures of romantic love by sharing their stories. Their stories encouraged and re-enforced my interest and motivation to write this thesis. Without them I could not have conducted and written this research the way I have.

I would also like to thank my supervisor Margriet van Heesch for providing me with positive feedback, constructive criticism and for guiding me through the process of writing and rewriting this thesis. Her constant reflection on her own prejudices and assumptions inspired me to be more critical on my own experiences, prejudices and assumptions. I also want to thank my second reader, Marie-Louise Janssen, for taking the time to read and provide helpful feedback on my research proposal and for taking the time to read and grade this thesis.

Lastly, I would like to thank all the people who inspired me to look beyond my fears, to be vulnerable and who trusted me to be free to explore my sexual and romantic desires. Who sometimes held my hand and sometimes let go of my hand in my personal search for what it is I desire in romantic love.

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Abstract

The hegemonic ideology on romantic love in Western European society is mononormative, exclusive and not representative for the diversity of ways in which sexual and/or romantic relationships can be arranged. This thesis aims at challenging the oppressive monogamous norm by sharing the stories of the abnormalized non-monogamous. The content analysis of theory and research surrounding non-monogamy brings forward a social constructionist perspective on sexuality and romantic love. The content analysis with a close reading on emotions of 12 qualitative interviews with non-monogamous people with an equal divide between men and women, shows a gendered difference in the experience of romantic love and desire.

Non-monogamous people experience romantic love with a focus on their individual identity, either by assuming an autonomous identity or by reflecting on their internal processes. Non-monogamous people express the desire to feel safe within their relationship(s), however there is gendered difference in how this safety is guaranteed. Furthermore, non-monogamous people focus their relationship(s) on honest communication of emotions. Lastly, non-monogamous people challenge hegemonic discourses of romantic love as sexually exclusive yet support hegemonic structures of masculinity and femininity. By sharing the stories of non-monogamous people, the hegemonic norm of romantic love can be challenged and start to lead to an inclusive representation of the diversity in possibilities for relationship arrangements.

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Chapter 1 Deciding Who Is Normal and Who Is Not

1.1 Just the Three of Us Becomes Just the Two of Us.

The first time I fell in love was when I was 7 years old. It was with a boy from my class in elementary school. I remember having butterflies in my stomach, I could not stop thinking about him and I felt nervous yet excited when going to school. We always sat next to each other in class and people knew we were in love. One day he asked me to go steady and I said yes. I now had a boyfriend. After a few weeks, his best friend, who always played together with us, told me he liked me as well and asked me to go steady with him as well. I said yes and I remember feeling really happy that I now had two boyfriends. We had a play date with the three of us and the next day we sat in class with the three of us together. Everything felt perfect until one day our class had gymnastics and we had to walk two-by-two and in a row to the gym. I was walking hand in hand with both my boyfriends, one was next to me and the other was behind us. When we had to wait in front of a traffic light, a group of girls walking in front of us turned around, looked at the three of us holding hands and started whispering to each other. When we walked further and entered the changing rooms for gymnastics, the girls came up to me and told me “You can’t have more than one boyfriend, that’s not normal!” The girls looked at me with judgment and were laughing out loud at the same time.

The implications of their judgmental commentary were more than me being dumped by the two boys. From that moment on, I realized that wherever I looked, couples were represented as a twosome. In books, advertisements, movies, the way people talked about relationships: these all showed couples with two people. After a few nights of confusion about the limits to love, I took this norm for relationships for granted and went on with my life. In the years that followed I had several long-term monogamous relationships and also had my fun being single. It was not until I was 21 years old that I reflected again on this idea that love and sex are restricted to the one person you are in a relationship with. It was around this time, that I realized that monogamy is not the only form a relationship can take, and that there are different ways in which

relationships can be arranged that are non-monogamous.

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different than by monogamous norms, the representation of non-monogamous people in media and research is still limited. When searching Google Scholar (2018) for academic articles on either ‘love relationships’ or ‘sex relationships’, more than 3.500.000 articles pop-up. When altering this search to ‘love/sex relationships’ and ‘monogamy’, about 50.000 articles remain. When altering the search to ‘love/sex relationships’ and ‘non-monogamy’, only 2.500 articles come up. This shows that the amount of academic studies that have been done about non-monogamous relationships is limited in comparison to the research that has been done on

monogamous relationships. Furthermore, the studies that have been done about non-monogamous relationships are limited in their focus on the experience of emotions and desires that govern thoughts and emotions and motivate actions for they focus merely on the rules and boundaries in non-monogamous relationships (Barker & Langdridge, 2010). A desire is, according to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (2018) a “conscious impulse toward something that promises enjoyment or satisfaction in its attainment”. According to American philosopher

George Schueler (1995) desires can be sexual, emotional, romantic, materialistic or anything else one can imagine, and desires can change over time.This is why I will focus this research on the experience of non-monogamous people of romantic love and desire.

As I want to know more about the experiences of non-monogamous people, I will study the way a person constructs and expresses his/her emotions. This is what is called emotion work (Hochschild, 1979). The feeling and experience of love is different for me than it is for someone else: it is a subjective experience (Kronqvist, 2012). I find it fascinating that there is a hegemonic norm when it comes to romantic love. If each individual can experience romantic love different, then how can they be expected to express this love in the same way? In western society today, the norm for romantic love is serial monogamy. Because there seems to be little knowledge about the experience of emotions of non-monogamous people, I will focus this research on people who do not conform to the norm of monogamy. What I would like to know more about is how non-monogamous people experience romantic love and desire. Therefore, in this research I will answer the question

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In order to answer this question, I will answer three sub-research questions: ‘How do already existing theory and research reflect on non-monogamy?’, ‘How do non-monogamous men in the Netherlands experience romantic love and desire?’ and ‘How do non-monogamous women in the Netherlands experience romantic love and desire?’

A research into the experiences, emotions, fears and desires of non-monogamous men and women can contribute to knowledge on how to navigate the non-normative relationship. It is important to find answers to my questions because the monogamous norm prevents from serious research into non-monogamous romantic love and desire. According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary (2018), monogamy can stand for two things: “the state or custom of being married to only one person at a time” or “the state or practice of having only one sexual partner at a time”. In western society, monogamy became the norm to ensure biological fatherhood and economic security for women (MacDonald, 1990; Overall, 1998).

In the Netherlands today, it seems that the idea of monogamy as marriage to - and sex with one partner at a time, has developed into loving only one person romantically at a time: sexual exclusivity now comes with emotional and romantic exclusivity. Self-help books about romantic love have titles that imply that there is only one person to love.1_{Popular T.V. shows} such as Friends (1994) and Grey’s Anatomy (2005) show examples of romantic, monogamous relationships; having romantic feelings or feeling sexual attraction to others than a romantic partner is morally judged. Other media that support the discourse of serial monogamous love are the Hollywood movie ‘Finding the One’ (Navarra & Marchetti, 2010) or the T.V. dating show ‘Are You the One?’2 I want to study how this monogamous norm is experienced when it comes

to expressing non-monogamous romantic love. The experience of people who don’t conform to the monogamous norm is not represented well in research or in narratives around romantic love. I suggest that the view of non-monogamous people on - and experience of romantic love and desire can challenge this oppressive norm.

Much research that has been done on relationships is from the United Kingdom and from the field of social and behavioral psychology (Barker, 2005). This gives insight in psychological mechanisms that shape how people feel and respond. Yet the psychological perspective brings forward only a limited view on relationships. In order to gain a better understanding of how and

1_{Finding the One’ (White, 2016) or ‘How to Find Your Soulmate Without Losing Your Soul’ (Evert & Evert, 2011).} 2_{Reality television series that aired on MTV in which singles try to find their one true love.}

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why people construct and experience relationships and emotions the way they do, a sociological perspective is necessary. The SAGE Journal Sexualities has published articles on relationships, emotions and norms from a sociological and gender studies perspective (Barker & Langdridge, 2010; Klesse, 2006, 2017). Yet there has not been done much research on non-monogamous relationships in the Netherlands and on the experience of non-monogamous people in the Netherlands of romantic love and desire.

According to Dutch sociologists Gert Hekma and Jan Willem Duyvendak (2011a: 411, 2011b: 625) the Netherlands is one of the most sexual liberal countries since the separation of state and church after the sexual revolution in the 1960s. Hekma and Duyvendak conducted studies on sexuality in the Netherlands but focused only on gay men and lesbians. They mention open relationships to be more frequent in gay relationships (2011b: 629), yet they do not

elaborate about non-monogamy in the Netherlands. I find it striking that the Netherlands,

considered a sexual liberal country, has not been researched when it comes to non-monogamies. American authors and professors of English Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner (1998) argue that the abnormalized should become public for social change to be produced. As non-monogamy is not the norm on romantic love in the Netherlands, I want to share the stories of the abnormalized non-monogamous and thereby make them part of the public. Their stories can challenge the hegemonic norm of serial monogamy and can produce social change. In the following section I will elaborate on how I will contribute to making the stories of non-monogamous people in the Netherlands public.

1.2 Collecting Stories of Non-Monogamous People

To make the stories of the abnormalized non-monogamous public, I first had to collect their stories. In this section I will show how I collected these stories to answer my sub-research questions ‘How do non-monogamous men in the Netherlands experience romantic love and desire?’ and ‘How do non-monogamous women in the Netherlands experience romantic love and desire?’

For this research I collected qualitative data through in-depth interviews (Bryman, 2012). To reach my participants, I posted a request on Facebook. After receiving many responses from people I already knew or from people who had been tagged in the post by mutual friends, I conducted 12 interviews with an equal divide between people who identify male and people who

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identify female. All participants identify as non-monogamous, yet not everyone was in a

relationship at the moment of the interview. The participants’ ages range between 26-38 and they have all been living and working in the Netherlands for more than 8 years. One male identified gay; four women identified non-heterosexual (bisexual or pansexual) yet had only been in heterosexual long-term relationships; seven interviewees identified heterosexual. The interviews were done face-to-face and were conducted in either the participants’ own homes or in a café of their choice.

As I first planned on conducting semi-structured interviews, I prepared several questions before conducting the interview (Appendix I). Yet I ended up not using the written questions as most answers came up through the conversation and questions followed naturally. As the interviews were unstructured, the interviewees had freedom to talk about issues they wanted to talk about. The interviews ended up having a focus on the experience of the interviewee of romantic love and desires. The interviews were audio-recorded with the consent of the interviewee. Besides recording, I wrote notes during the interview on other things that were striking, such as facial expressions, tone of voice and body language. Furthermore, after I stopped recording I mostly stayed for another drink with the interviewee. I noticed some

interviewees were more open to share their stories and experiences after I had stopped recording and after I also shared some of my thoughts on – and experiences with non-monogamy. Even though I started the interviews with a short story about myself and about my personal interest in non-monogamy, I did not want to influence the interviewees and therefore waited till after the interview to share more personal stories. After leaving the interview I immediately made a recording of my own thoughts and insights of the interview so I wouldn’t forget any of these.

I transcribed the interviews immediately after - or the day after I conducted them to get the most accurate and complete image of the interview on paper. During and after the

transcribing, I categorized the data gathered in the interviews using the technique coding (Lofland, Snow, Anderson & Lofland, 2006: Bryman, 2012). This gave me the opportunity to analyze the interviews in a structured manner. I analyzed the transcripts of the interviews with a close reading on emotions and categorized the data into 13 concepts that appeared important to the interviewees, as words surrounding these concepts came up often: monogamy; sex; love; jealousy; fear; norms; freedom; honesty; trust; safety; communication; relationship; other experiences/feelings.

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In this thesis, names of the interviewees are fictitious to ensure their anonymity. What should be noted is that the people interviewed in this research do not give an inclusive

representation of the population of non-monogamous people. They are only a specific group of people, reachable via a specific way - within my network through Internet or through

snowballing. Therefore my research is limited to people who have access to Internet or are in direct contact with another participant. The goal of this research is not to create transcendent knowledge or to draw conclusion on how all non-monogamous people experience romantic love and desire, the goal is to tell a different narrative than the one that follows the hegemonic norm, which might in turn affect this norm. Therefore in this research I will only make situated

knowledge claims (Haraway, 1988; Abbott, 2004).

My interest is in how discourses on romantic love structure emotions of non-monogamous individuals. To analyze the data from the interviews, I first did a content analysis of theory on sexual discourses to explain how norms on romantic love and desire are produced. Next, I analyzed research on feeling rules and emotions to gain a better understanding of how non-monogamous people experience romantic love and desire. Furthermore, I did a content analysis on research that has already been done in this field with a focus on emotions. These findings helped me show how my research is important and can be an addition to the already existing body of knowledge. In the following two sections of this chapter I will elaborate about theoretical concepts and research that I analyzed.

The content analysis together with the data collected through interviews helped me to answer my research question of how non-monogamous people in the Netherlands experience romantic love and desire. As the collecting of data through interviews has been discussed in this section, I will dedicate the following section to the analysis of theory and research and the answering of my sub-research question ‘How do already existing theory and research reflect on non-monogamy?’

1.3 Studies on Non-Monogamy

For the analysis of the interviews, I employed concepts of and research done by other researchers. In this section I will give a preview of at what research on non-monogamy I analyzed to gain a full perspective on the subject.

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culture, with a focus on polyamory. According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary (2018) polyamory is “the state or practice of having more than one open romantic relationship at a time”. Barker (2005) argues polyamory to challenge normative ideals and she brings forward different discourses polyamorists use to identify.

A scholar who conducted much research on the topic of non-monogamy is German sociologist Christian Klesse (2006, 2017). He mainly focuses his research on one specific type of non-monogamy: polyamory. Klesse (2006) bases his research on qualitative in-depth interviews with polyamorous people and shows how polyamorous people shape and construct their sexual and romantic relationships. He argues that the discourse on polyamory focuses on “love, intimacy, honesty, communication and commitment” (Klesse, 2006: 578).

In more recent work, Klesse (2017) puts more attention to how non-monogamous people construct their emotions in relationships and how this relates to the outside world of

non-monogamous people. He reviews the book Love’s Refraction in which Canadian sociologist Jillian Deri (2015) studies how polyamorous people deal with jealousy in their relationships. She argues that in polyamorous relationships, feeling any emotion is deemed appropriate, yet the way people act upon that emotion is what is important and should be controlled. Besides jealousy, other emotions that Deri discusses are love and compersion, the latter being “the feeling of taking joy in the joy that others you love share among themselves, especially taking joy in the

knowledge that your beloveds are expressing their love for one another” (Deri, 2015: 32). According to Deri (2011, 2015), feeling rules that shape and structure our behavior are revised and rewritten in polyamorous relationships.

Klesse (2017) also reviews the book Border Sexualities, Border Families in Schools, written by Australian sociologist and philosopher Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli’s (2010). She argues that non-monogamous people are part of a group called “border sexualities” and are often marginalized. To deal with normative, hostile environments, border sexualities embody certain strategies: passing; bordering; and polluting.

In Chapter 2 I will elaborate further about these studies on non-monogamy. In the following section I will elaborate about the theoretical framework I will employ for the analysis of my thesis.

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In order to understand how non-monogamous people experience romantic love and desire and to answer my research question, I will review theories that I will use for my theoretical framework. To gain a better understanding of how non-monogamous people shape and construct their

emotions, I will use the following section to look at already existing theory on the production and reproduction of norms and I will discuss theory on emotions. First, I will look at theories on sexual discourse from French philosopher Michel Foucault (1975, 1976) and American

philosopher Judith Butler (1988, 2001) to gain a better understanding of how a norm is produced and constructed in a society. I will build on theory from Canadian philosopher Christine Overall (1998) for a better understanding of the construction of sexual identity. Lastly, I will look into theories of emotions and feeling norms using theory of American sociologists Arlie Russel Hochschild (1979) and Robin Simon, Donna Eder and Cathy Evans (1992).

In his book The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1 (1976) Foucault argues that sexuality is constructed by discourse, by power relations, by culture and by the social world around us. In the 19th century, due to the growing knowledge on medicine and the body, the medical discourse became powerful. This changed the way sexuality was discussed and shifted the government’s interest from class distinctions towards the regulation of the population’s sexual behavior. Foucault coined the terms bio-power and bio-politics to explain how the government

implemented mechanisms to shape, discipline and regulate the bodies, sexual desires and sexual behavior of the population (Foucault, 1976: 143). By implementing these mechanisms of state control and governmentality, the government produces a way of thinking that becomes

institutionalized and reproduced by people and institutions in society. Examples of bio-power are laws and rules around marriage. In the Netherlands, marriage is only allowed between two people at a time (Schmeets, 2016). The institution of marriage reproduces monogamy as the hegemonic discourse on romantic love. This institutional way of thinking thus aids in the production of a dominant discourse and the creation of a norm. In his book Discipline and Punish (1975: 215) Foucault argues that through disciplinary techniques, dominant discourses and norms become internalized and reproduced by the population. According to Foucault (1975; 1976) the way people think about a concept like sexuality is influenced by the way the state arranges its laws, health care etc.

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structure and discipline both the actor and its audience. Furthermore, Butler (2001) brings

forward theory on intelligibility, which is influenced by performativity. I will elaborate about and employ these concepts to research how a non-monogamous sexual identity is constructed.

To research how non-monogamous people experience romantic love and desire, I will be looking into the construction and managing of their emotions. The anecdote in the introduction of this chapter of the girls in primary school coming up to me and saying “You can’t have more than one boyfriend, that’s not normal”, shows an example of how feeling rules on romantic love can be constraining and oppressive. According to Hochschild (1979: 551), feeling rules “are seen as the side of ideology that deals with emotion and feeling”. She introduces the term emotion management and emotion work to speak of the work it takes people to deal with these feeling rules. Feeling rules on romantic love shape and construct the way we experience and express our romantic feelings (Simon, Eder & Evans, 1992). According to a study done by Hochschild (Simon, Eder & Evans, 1992), when their emotions don’t match dominant feeling norms, women tend to manipulate and control their feelings. Based on her study, she argues that “love, like other emotions, is shaped by cultural beliefs, which include feeling norms” (Simon, Eder & Evans, 1992: 30).

Simon, Eder and Evans (1992) conducted research on feeling norms among adolescent females in the United States. Their findings show that there is an imperative on how adolescent females should feel romantic love. They concluded that in adolescent peer culture in the U.S., there are 5 dominant feeling norms on romantic love for girls. As one of the feeling rules prescribes that girls “should only have romantic feelings for someone of the opposite sex”, this reproduces a heterosexual norm and is therefore heteronormative (Simon, Eder & Evans, 1992: 34). Furthermore, the feeling rules reproduce a monogamous norm and are therefore

mononormative as “one should not have romantic feelings for a boy who is already attached” and “one should have romantic feelings for only one boy at a time” (Simon, Eder & Evans, 1992: 36: 39).

Russian psychologist Victor Karandashev (2017) argues that expressions of romantic love in America are the same for other western countries. I therefore suggest that how feeling norms are produced and shape and structure emotions in the United States can be compared to how feeling norms are produced and shape and structure emotions in the Netherlands. Simon, Eder & Evans (1992) show that emotional socialization is a powerful mechanism through which feeling

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norms are created, reproduced and become internalized. Their study however, focuses only on adolescent girls in school. In this research, I will look at how non-monogamous people manage, produce and/or reproduce feeling norms surrounding romantic love.

I will employ the previously discussed theoretical concepts as the theoretical framework through which I will conduct and analyze my data. Together with the background information on non-monogamy, I will answer my research question and sub-research questions.

1.5 Thesis Outline

In this chapter I introduced what my thesis will be about and why it is important to gain

knowledge on the subject. I presented my research question and my sub-research questions and discussed the methodology on how I will collect and analyze my data. Furthermore, I discussed some important background theory and research and gave a preview of what theoretical

framework I used to conduct and analyze my research.

In Chapter 2 I will answer the first sub-research question ´How do already existing theory and research reflect on non-monogamy?’ I will analyze research and theory that I will employ for the theoretical perspective through which I will conduct and analyze the data in this research in Chapter 3, 4 and 5. Furthermore, in Chapter 2 I will analyze research that has already been done in this field. This will contribute to a better understanding of the current normative discourses surrounding romantic love and desire.

Besides the content analysis on hegemonic norms on romantic love and desire, I will conduct qualitative interviews with an equal divide between men and women in order to answer the research question. I will analyze and present the data I collected through the interviews. Chapter 3 will be aimed at answering my second sub-research question ‘How do non-monogamous men in the Netherlands experience romantic love and desire?’ Subsequently, Chapter 4 will be aimed at answering the third sub-research question ‘How do non-monogamous women in the Netherlands experience romantic love and desire?’ I will read these interviews with a close reading on emotions.

In Chapter 5 I will bring the findings of the theory and background discussion together with the data and analysis of the interviews with both men and women to answer the main

research question ‘How do non-monogamous people in the Netherlands experience romantic love and desire?’ In Chapter 6 I will present a recap of - and reflect on what I have done to answer the

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research question. I will then follow with a conclusion based on these findings and present suggestions for further research.

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Chapter 2 Juggling Discourses on Romantic Love

2.1 Defining the Realness of the Relationship

When I was 21 years old I met Marvin at a friends’ house, he came over to offer me a drink and we fell in love at first sight. From that moment on we were together as a couple and it felt as though we’d been together for years already. Classic love story one might say. However, the way we pursued our relationship was not as classic or standard. Even though (or maybe even because) I had been in several long-term monogamous relationships in the past, I strongly felt the urge to not restrict my partner or myself to be sexually or emotionally exclusive. One of the first

conversations Marvin and me had was about monogamy, and our perspective on relationships and exclusivity seemed to match. It was no question to us that we would be non-monogamous and give each other the freedom to explore other contacts sexually and emotionally. In the months that followed, I got many different responses from friends, colleagues or other people I met when I told them about the way we arranged our relationship. Responses I often got were: “But if you have sex with others and go on dates with others, how is your relationship with him the real one?” or “You’re just waiting till you meet someone who you really want to be in a relationship with.”

These responses made me feel misunderstood. To me, it was so clear that I could love my partner and have sexual and emotional relationships with others at the same time. I could even love these others as well, just as I felt love for my more than one friend and for all members of my family. That I got these responses made me reflect on the definition of a real relationship: my surroundings told me that a relationship can be real or unreal, and it seemed that my choice of not being sexually and emotionally exclusive made my relationship unreal.

In mononormative culture, it is clearly defined how a relationship should be in order to be acknowledged as real. “The state or practice of having only one sexual partner at a time”

(Merriam-Webster, 2018) is what defines a monogamous relationship. However, for non-conventional relationships such as non-monogamous relationships, it seems more difficult to define when a relationship is real. During my first non-monogamous relationship I got to explore what I defined as a real relationship and how I preferred to arrange my sexual and romantic relationships. I know about my personal experience and journey towards an understanding of

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romantic love and desire in a non-monogamous way. What I do not know is how other people come to know romantic love and desire as non-monogamous. Therefore, in this chapter, I will show how non-monogamy is known in academic disciplines.

I will look into what research has already been done in the field of sociology, anthropology, psychology and philosophy. I will do a content analysis on discourses of hegemonic norms of romantic love. I will look into already existing theory surrounding non-monogamy, such as theories about emotions, normalization and sexuality. This chapter will be aimed at finding answers to my first sub-research question ‘How do already existing theory and research reflect on non-monogamy?’ This question is an important question to ask in order to gain a better understanding of the experience of non-monogamous people of romantic love and desire. To understand how non-monogamy is known in the academic field, I need to know what research has already been done and how this research and theory reflect on current notions of romantic love and desire. I will use this knowledge so my research can add to the current body of knowledge in the field of non-monogamy.

Concepts that I believe to be of importance in understanding human behavior and the production of norms from a sociological perspective are the concepts governmentality, bio-power and bio-politics. These concepts have been brought forward by Michel Foucault in his books

Discipline and Punish (1975) and The History of Sexuality, Vol. I (1976). Judith Butler (1988)

brought forward theory on the performativity of gender identity, which I will apply to the performativity of sexual identity. She furthermore discusses intelligibility (Butler, 2001), which is an important concept in understanding how non-monogamous people identify, present

themselves and are perceived by mononormative hegemonic culture. In her article “Monogamy, Nonmonogamy and Identity” (1998), Overall looks into the cultural constructions of emotion and identity. I will employ her findings for a better understanding of the concepts of performativity and intelligibility. Furthermore, in this chapter I will look into theories of emotions to gain a better understanding of how non-monogamous people construct their emotions and experiences of romantic love and desire. I will analyze theories and research of Hochschild (1979) and Simon, Eder and Evans (1992) on emotion work and feeling norms.

Lastly, I will do a content analysis on research that has already been done in the field. I will analyze research on polyamory from Barker (2005) and Langdridge (Barker & Langdridge, 2010) and Klesse (2006, 2017). I will analyze a study on the construction and performance of

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border identity from Pallotta-Chiarolli (2010) and on the experience and managing of taboo emotions like jealousy in open relationships by Deri (2011, 2015).

The academic research on non-monogamy discussed in this thesis is limited to English written sociological, psychological and philosophical research and is from the year 2005 and up. Publications of research on non-monogamy before the year 2000 are mainly historical, religious or from the discipline of biology and they focus on understanding how societies arranged their sexual behavior throughout history (Alexander, 1987; Brundage, 1987; Herlihy, 1995;

MacDonald, 1990). In the year 2000, in the United States, 60 per cent of the population had access to the Internet from home and/or work (Rice, 2002). According to American

communication researcher Richard Rice (2002) the rise of the Internet was of great influence in the way minorities could build their communities. Researchers now have better access to these sexual communities, which explains why much qualitative research on non-monogamy has been conducted after the year 2000. Much knowledge on non-monogamy comes from qualitative data from either the United States (Simon, Eder & Evans, 1992) or the United Kingdom (Klesse, 2006, 2017; Barker, 2005; Barker & Langdridge, 2010). Other studies that I will analyze in this research are from Canada (Deri, 2011, 2015) or Australia (Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2010). In the next section, I will start with an analysis of theory from a philosopher from France: Michel Foucault. The theory I will analyze is applicable to Western European societies.

2.2 The Production and the Performance of Monogamous Norms

Because I am researching non-monogamy, which is not the norm for romantic love in Western European society, I first want to understand how a Western European society produces and reproduces norms. Foucault (1976) theorized about production and internalization of norms and I will use his tools to work towards a better understanding of non-monogamy. With Discipline and

Punish (1975) Foucault brought forward the idea that a society can be controlled and disciplined

by an exercise of power from the government. By imposing discourses of romantic love on a society, the government produces dominant discourses and norms surrounding romantic love. The exercise of power to control the population is what Foucault calls governmentality.

Discourses that support and normalize monogamous love and abnormalize non-monogamy get produced and internalized through disciplinary techniques from the government.

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With The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1 (1976) Foucault brought forward a social

constructionist view on sexuality. He argued sexuality to be constructed by discourse, culture and society and always being in relation to structures of power. Foucault further theorized that as a society becomes more discursive and people talk more openly about sex, sexuality gets

disciplined and controlled and norms about sexuality get produced.

As the medical discourse became powerful in the 19th century, it became interesting for the government to regulate its population in terms of sexual behavior (Foucault, 1976). This caused for a shift from class shaping identity to sexuality shaping identity. The way an individual identified sexually became more important because of this shift during the 19th century. British sociologist Nikolas Rose brings forward his insights and thoughts on Foucault’s concept

governmentality. Rose (2000: 325) argues society to be a “regime of control” with a network of circuits through which surveillance and control are continually monitored and reshaped.

Therefore, it is not just through acts of the state that control is exercised but also by institutions and by the population itself. A society thus carries dominant discourses which discipline people and internalize hegemonic norms of conduct.

Foucault coined the terms bio-power and bio-politics to refer to “institutions of power (…) present at every level of the social body and utilized by diverse institutions” (1976: 141). Bio-power is a form of governmentality that refers to controlling human bodies and human sexuality through disciplinary institutions such as schools, hospitals, law and religion. Bio-politics are specific mechanisms implemented by the state to regulate the population and

individual sexual behavior to control birth and death rates, reproduction rates, fertility rates, etc. Examples of bio-politics are health care, birth control, child support etc. Through these

disciplinary techniques and mechanisms, the state exerts power over the population and

institutionalizes a way of thinking about sexuality. As institutions have a disciplinary function, they produce dominant discourses and norms. It is through these techniques of governmentality that a normalizing society is created (Foucault, 1976: 144; Rose, 2000: 327).

In the Netherlands, institutions like religion and law reproduce monogamy as intelligible, real love and present non-monogamy as unintelligible, unreal love. In the Netherlands, according to the Compendium Personen-en Familierecht it is punishable by law to marry more than one person (Wortmann & Duijvendijk-Brand, 2012: 42). Even though the number of people in the Netherlands visiting churches or actively practicing religion has decreased since 2010 according

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to Het Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (Schmeets, 2016), the impact of religion on Western European society is still acknowledgeable. According to American historians James Brundage (1987) and David Herlihy (1995) Christianity has left the strongest impact on Western European society. And as Christian beliefs support monogamy and punish polygamy, the institution of religion in Western Europe reproduces the monogamous norm.

Furthermore, cultural structures of emotions such as jealousy also reproduce the monogamous norm (Overall, 1998). According to Christine Overall (1998), jealousy is a negatively experienced emotion that is often experienced when a partner is involved in a sexual and/or romantic relationship with someone else. Experiencing this emotion is avoided in

hegemonic mononormative culture through monogamous relationships that restrict partners from getting involved sexually and/or romantically with others (Overall, 1998).

American philosopher Judith Butler (1988) introduced a theory on gender identity, constructed through a performative repetition of stylized bodily acts. Butler (1988: 527) argues that gender “is real only to the extent that it is performed”. These performative acts are embedded with history, norms and beliefs, which structure and discipline both the actor and its social

audience. Butler (1988: 526) argues that gender identity, as a social performance, reproduces social laws. In this definition of performativity, the construct of gender identity can be seen as a node in the network of circuits through which control is exercised, thereby embodying a

disciplining role (Rose, 2000).

The idea of gender as a performative act that creates identity and produces identity norms can be used to explain how one’s sexual preference or behavior shapes one’s identity and concept of the self (Butler, 1988; Overall, 1998). According to Foucault the idea of a natural/unnatural sexuality is culturally constructed to structure and discipline human conduct (Foucault, 1976; Butler, 1988: 524). According to Overall (1998) sexual relationships are, in Western European societies today, cultivated for personal reasons. “Sex is (…) made to seem part of individuality, and the start of sexual experience is commonly thought to mark the development of a more mature identity” (Overall, 1998: 8). Therefore, the performativity of sexuality says something about who you are as an individual; it shapes identity and sexual identity.

According to Overall (1998), the cultural construction of the sexual self in Western European societies is different for men than it is for women. For men, there is a focus on masculine performance: their identity is mainly constructed through sexual activity. Female

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identity however, is culturally constructed and defined by their sexual partner(s). Overall (1998) argues women to therefore behave more monogamous then men, which confirms and reproduces the monogamous norm in Western European society. Overall (1998) brings forward that there is a gendered difference in the performativity of sexual identity in mononormative culture. In her article, Overall (1998: 14) argues the construction of the self to be problematic for women living under patriarchal conditions, she does not make a distinction between monogamous or non-monogamous women. However, as I will analyze in the 6th section of this chapter, non-monogamous people embody a set of tools to constructively deal with taboo emotions (Deri, 2011, 2015). As non-monogamy is a non-conventional way to arrange a relationship, I suggest that these tools give monogamous people opportunity to construct their identity in a non-conventional way: a way that does not confirm these gender patterns. With the analysis of the interviews I will try to find answers to the question whether there is a gendered difference in performativity in non-monogamous culture as well.

Performativity affects how one is perceived in society: it affects intelligibility. In her article “Giving an Account of Oneself” (2001) Butler refers to intelligibility as the ability to be acknowledged by others as a valid social subject. She argues that the social construction of the self is related to and dependent on “both the existence of the Other (…) [and] on the possibility that the normative horizon within which the Other sees and listens and knows and recognizes is also subject to a critical opening” (Butler, 2001: 22). In applying Butler’s concept of

intelligibility to sexual identity, I suggest that the way ones’ sexual identity is performed, constructed and experienced is influenced by norms of society.

In the personal anecdote from the beginning of this chapter I brought forward that people in my surroundings did not acknowledge my non-monogamous relationship as a real relationship. This anecdote shows that when romantic love does not meet the standards of romantic love in Western European society, the love is perceived as not real and is therefore unintelligible. Aforementioned concepts of governmentality, bio-power, bio-politics, performativity and intelligibility all show that there is a discourse that supports monogamous love in Western European society. Furthermore, these concepts bring forward a social constructionist perspective on sexual identity. Now that I know about the production and internalization of norms, I want to gain a better understanding of people’s experiences of these norms and of their own desire. As I will be conducting a research on the experience of romantic love and desire, I want to understand

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how emotions are experienced and dealt with.

2.3 Emotion Work and Feeling Norms

In her essay “Emotion Work, Feeling Rules, and Social Structure” (1979) Arlie Russel

Hochschild argues human emotions to be socially constructed and controlled or regulated through emotion-management, this is what Hochschild calls emotion work. Emotions can be either

repressed or stimulated, depending on what a situation prescribes. She argues there are three ways of doing emotion work: through cognition, through the body and through expression. Hochschild (1979) calls the social prescription of emotions feeling rules. Feeling rules may differ in situations, social classes and genders.

Simon, Eder and Evans (1992) conducted a study on feeling rules on romantic love for white, adolescent females in America. They show that love in American culture has normative aspects, which are shaped by cultural beliefs. They emphasize that contemporary gender roles prescribe women to be focused on “love and interpersonal relationships” and men to be focused on “occupational achievement for self-fulfillment” (Simon, Eder & Evans, 1992: 30). The culturally imposed focus on romantic love and relationships for women impels the formation of feeling rules surrounding romantic love. Hochschild (Simon, Eder & Evans, 1992) confirms that the difference in amount of time and work put into the managing of emotions is gendered. She argues women to be more likely than men to put energy into manipulating their emotions to fit the social norm and thus to fit prescribed feeling rules.

Together with Overall’s (1998) argument for a gendered difference in performativity of sexual identity, Hochschild’s argument for a gendered difference in the managing of emotions (Simon, Eder & Evans, 1992) create an expectation for a gendered difference in the managing of emotions and performance of sexual identity of non-monogamous people. However, as I

discussed earlier, in section 5 of this chapter I will bring forward research in which is argued that non-monogamy comes with different feeling-norms (Deri, 2011, 2015; Klesse, 2017). I suggest that non-conventional ways of arranging sexual and/or romantic relationships can bring forward non-conventional ways of dealing with emotions and performativity of identity. I will analyze whether this is the case with the analysis of the interviews in the following chapters.

The process of normalizing emotions and establishing feeling rules for women is most important during adolescence and happens most in interaction with peers. That is why Simon,

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Eder and Evans (1992) focus on peer group socialization to show how feeling norms are established and continuously negotiated. As I want to research normative aspects of romantic love and desire, I will employ the term feeling norms for the remainder of this thesis. The authors bring forward a social constructionist view on emotions and suggest that cultural and social ideals of romantic love are internalized in early adolescence through these feeling norms. Simon, Eder & Evans (1992: 29) argue that there are five “feeling norms underlying romantic love in

adolescent female peer culture”. These feeling norms reinforce the hegemonic ideology of romantic love as heterosexual, monogamous and of great importance for women’s identities (Simon, Eder & Evans, 1992). The feeling norm not having “romantic feelings for a boy who is already attached” and having “romantic feelings for only one boy at a time” (Simon, Eder & Evans, 1992: 36: 39) endorse hegemonic cultural ideals of exclusivity and monogamy. These feeling norms impel girls to control their romantic feelings and emotions to fit the cultural norm. The authors show that girls apply different discourse strategies to reproduce and reinforce feeling norms to their peers. I argue peer socialization to be a form of governmentality as Rose (2000) brought forward, which internalizes norms on romantic love.

Although Simon, Eder and Evans (1992) base their research on white, adolescent females in America, the idea that emotions are constructed, negotiated and controlled through feeling norms is applicable to other identities and situations in western societies. Victor Karandashev (2017) argues that expressions of romantic love are the same in western societies. In this research I will focus on how people living in the Netherlands who do not conform to the hegemonic norm of monogamy experience, construct and/or regulate their emotions and how this relates to feeling norms specific to monogamous culture. In the following section I will analyze how non-monogamy is known in academic research to see how this research can contribute to the already existing body of knowledge on non-monogamy.

2.4 Discourses in Identifying Polyamorous

Meg Barker examines the relationship between hegemonic societal structures and how

polyamorists in the U.K. construct their identity in the article “This Is My Partner, And This Is My … Partner’s Partner: Constructing a Polyamorous Identity in a Monogamous World” (Barker, 2005). She focuses her research on sexuality in western culture, of which she says the dominant ideology on romantic and sexual relationships is monogamy, heterosexuality and with

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an active male and a passive female. Polyamorous culture challenges mononormativity by allowing sexual and/or romantic relationships with more than one person. Barker (2005) argues that polyamory challenges heteronormativity, for most polyamorists in her research have sexual or romantic relationships with people from the opposite sex as well as with people from the same sex. Furthermore, polyamory offers an opportunity to challenge gendered power relationships (Barker, 2005).

Barker’s (2005) research shows two discourses that polyamorists utilize in identifying polyamorous. In the discourse of difference/similarity polyamory is viewed “as different and threatening to monogamy” or “as normal and similar to monogamy” (Barker, 2005: 80). In the discourse of natural identity/free choice, being polyamorous is experienced “as something I (naturally) am” or “as something I (choose to) do” (Barker, 2005: 80). She argues polyamorists to employ each discourse in different moments by using language to position themselves in their surrounding. According to her interviewees, polyamory is viewed as threatening by monogamous people for it is different than the hegemonic mononormative way of viewing relationships. Yet at the same time, participants also viewed their way of shaping their sexual and romantic

relationships as similar to monogamy. Furthermore, many polyamorists experience their

polyamorous lifestyle as an inborn identity or feel the need to express it to the outside world as a sexual self-identity. Barker (2005: 84) concludes that an important aspect of polyamory is that polyamorists feel they can ‘be their “real” self’ or express their different ‘“real” selves’ in different relationships.

Together with English psychologist Darren Langdridge, Barker argues that polyamory enables people to counter the hegemonic ideology of romantic love, which endorses capitalism, male dominance and heteronormativity. The authors conclude that “non-monogamies continue to be demonized, pathologized, marginalized and subject to the social regulation of ridicule”

(Barker & Langdridge, 2010: 756). They show that current research focuses mainly on the rules and boundaries set by non-monogamous people to manage their relationships. I conclude that much current research has focused on one specific type of non-monogamy: polyamory. Therefore, I will open up my research to all forms of non-monogamy. However, research on polyamory gives insight in how people who do not conform to the hegemonic norm on romantic love, manage emotions and construct their sexual identity. In the following section I will analyze

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research that gives insight into discourses that polyamorists apply and embody to deal with hegemonic norms and with their emotions.

2.5 Polyamory as Critical Discourse

Christian Klesse conducted research on non-monogamies with a focus on polyamory. In “Polyamory and it’s Others” (2006) Klesse conducted interviews with gay and bisexual men in the United Kingdom. The hegemonic discourse in Western European society on romantic love is that one should be sexually and emotionally exclusive to one partner and one should find

everything one needs in one partner. Polyamory does not endorse this ideology of romantic love; it does however support the idea that people need an emotional connection to their sexual

partners. Klesse (2006) argues that love is an important factor in polyamorous relationships and sexuality often is less important in these relationships. Within polyamorous discourses, love and intimate friendships – sexual or non-sexual – are of great importance. Klesse (2006) argues that boundaries between different forms of relationships (friendship, lover or partner) are ambiguous in polyamorous relationships.

Klesse (2006: 571) argues that in polyamory, two themes are important in forming the basis of the relationship(s): honesty and consensus. He argues honesty to be “the basic axiom of polyamory”; only through honest communication can consensus be reached. Klesse does not go into how polyamorous people ensure this honest communication. Furthermore, I argue that Klesse is inadequate in his argument for honesty as the basis for polyamory as he does not define what the honesty is about, whether it is honesty about thoughts, emotions or actions. I suggest that honest communication about thoughts, emotions and actions is the basis for any human interaction to be productive. Other themes and elements that Klesse (2006: 572) mentions to be important in polyamorous relationships are all connected to honesty: “communication,

negotiation, self-responsibility, emotionality, intimacy, compersion.” In the following section I will elaborate about how polyamorous people deal with emotions such as jealousy.

Klesse (2006) concludes his article arguing that women are expected to follow hegemonic romantic love discourses and narratives. As this does not go for men, this implies a gendered double standard of sexual morality (Klesse, 2006). This normative expectation of romantic love and sexual behavior also applies to intimacy, as Klesse (2006: 578) argues: “[h]eterosexual culture achieves much of its meta-cultural intelligibility through the ideologies and institutions of

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intimacy.” Klesse ends his article by suggesting that polyamory can bee seen as a discourse that critiques current normative expectations about romantic love and intimacy. For the analysis of the interviews, I will look into whether other non-monogamies also critique normative expectations about romantic love and intimacy, and if there is also a gendered double standard in

non-monogamous culture. First, I will analyze more research on non-non-monogamous discourses in the next two sections.

2.6 Strategies to Deal with Poly-Challenges

In her book Border Sexualities, Border Families in Schools (2010) Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli argues polyamory to be a border sexuality, just as homosexuality and bisexuality are border sexualities. As these border sexualities often encounter hostile reactions and feel unsafe in certain environments and situations, they embodied specific strategies: “passing, bordering and

polluting” (Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2010: 221). According to Pallotta-Chiarolli these are tactics used to question and transcend sociocultural structures of sexuality. Passing as monogamous, which Pallotta-Chiarolli also calls normalization (2010; Klesse, 2017), is according to Sara Ahmed (1999) a process of identification and forming a social identity. Ahmed (1999) brings forward several tactics to construct a social identity among which she names transgression and

performativity. I apply Butler’s (1988) concept to argue that non-monogamous people perform their sexual identity in order to be intelligible. They pass as monogamous in order to be

perceived as real and to feel safe.

The second strategy, bordering, is one Pallotta-Chiarolli (2010) also calls negotiating. This strategy is employed to establish where/when a polyamorous identity can be public or should be private. The third tactic, polluting, which Pallotta-Chiarolli (2010) also calls noncompliance, is an act whereby an individual denies hegemonic structures by actively displaying polyamory.

I argue other non-monogamies to be border sexualities as well. With the analysis of the interviews, I will analyze whether these border identities embody strategies to deal with hegemonic societal structures as mentioned by Pallotta-Chiarolli (2010). Other challenges polyamorists have to deal with are emotions. Jillian Deri argues in her doctoral dissertation “Polyamory or Polyagony? Jealousy in Open Relationships” (2011) that psychologists view jealousy as an emotion that is not inborn but that arises in specific socio-cultural circumstances.

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Deri argues from a social constructionist’ view that social factors and cultural values impact how and when emotions are experienced, which implies that how jealousy is experienced depends on the person and the situation.

In her book Love’s Refraction. Jealousy and Compersion in Queer Polyamorous

Relationships (2015), Deri argues that within polyamorous culture, having multiple sexual and/or

intimate relationships is usually not any cause for jealousy, yet the feeling of jealousy is not unknown to polyamorous people. Feelings of jealousy are not tabooed as is done in mainstream romantic culture; polyamory provides a set of tools to constructively deal with taboo emotions like jealousy, and not have these emotions overrule the individuals and the relationship(s) (Deri, 2011). Deri (2011) argues that the central tool to constructively deal with taboo emotions is by honest communication about the emotion. Honest communication “involved negotiating boundaries (…), learning and expressing one’s own triggers for jealousy [or other taboo emotions] and building trust” (Deri, 2011: 154).

According to Deri (2015; Klesse, 2017), different expressions of jealousy are gendered: men deny the feeling or respond with anger whilst women admit the feeling of jealousy and respond to it internally by blaming themselves. Deri (2015: 98) argues that, aside from gender, “the question of perception” affects the way jealousy is dealt with. How one perceives one's own position in relation to larger structures of power is different in polyamorous culture than in mainstream monogamous culture. When jealousy is experienced, polyamorous feeling norms prescribe to not act upon this emotion impulsively. Experiencing any emotion is called for, however, they should be dealt with constructively (Deri, 2015: 30). Within polyamorous culture, the word compersion is used to describe a feeling opposite to jealousy: a feeling of joy when knowing that your partner is having a good time with somebody else, sexually or romantically, and is therefore happy (Deri, 2015: 32). In polyamorous relationships, feeling norms are constantly discussed and rewritten.

Pallotta-Chiarolli (2010) and Deri (2011, 2015) both bring forward different strategies employed by polyamorists in dealing with challenges that come with polyamory. For the analysis of the interviews in the next two chapters, I will research whether other non-monogamies employ these strategies as well.

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In this chapter I presented and analyzed work of Foucault (1975, 1976), Butler (1988, 2001) and Overall (1998) as the theoretical lens through which I will conduct my own research. Foucault (1976) coined the terms bio-power and bio-politics to talk about mechanisms implemented by the state to control and structure the population. These acts of governmentality are part of a network of circuits that create our society of control in which human behavior is continually monitored and restructured (Rose, 2000). The norm of monogamy is produced and reproduced through institutions such as religion and law and by cultural structures of emotions. Butler’s (1988) theory on gender as a performative act further emphasizes the role of sexuality in the shaping of one’s identity. How one performs one’s sexual identity impacts intelligibility (Butler, 2001). Overall (1998) argues male identity to be culturally constructed through performative, sexual acts whereas female identity is culturally constructed by their sexual partners. This gendered

difference reproduces the monogamous norm for women in Western European society.

Furthermore, I analyzed work of Hochschild (1979) and Simon, Eder and Evans (1992) to gain a better understanding of the socio-cultural production of taboo emotions such as jealousy. Hochschild (1979) argues human emotions to be socially constructed and to be regulated through emotion work. She proposes a theory on feeling rules, which prescribe what a society expects an individual to feel and how to behave in specific situations. Simon, Eder and Evans (1992) build further on her theory and conducted research on feeling norms on romantic love for white, adolescent females. They concluded five feeling norms, which endorse cultural ideals of exclusivity, heteronormativity and monogamy.

In this chapter I have shown that most recent work on non-monogamy has focused on polyamory. Barker (2005) conducted qualitative research on polyamorous people in the U.K. and argued polyamorous culture to challenge mononormativity, heteronormativity and gendered power relationships. She argues that polyamorists employ different discourses in identifying polyamorous. Polyamorists view polyamory as either different or similar to monogamy and identify themselves as either something they naturally are or choose to do. Polyamorists employ these discourses in different moments to position themselves. Together with Langdridge, Barker argues polyamory to challenge the hegemonic ideology of romantic love (Barker & Langdridge, 2010). Their research shows that there is limited knowledge that focuses on the experiences of non-monogamous people.

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Klesse (2006) has shown that polyamorous discourses put emphasis on love, honesty and consensus in their romantic and/or sexual relationships. Klesse (2006) brought forward that there is a gendered difference in the importance of following hegemonic romantic love discourses and narratives, which relates to feeling norms discussed by Hochschild (1979) and Simon, Eder and Evans (1992). Pallotta-Chiarolli (2010) argues polyamory to be a border sexuality. She brings forward three strategies polyamorous people use to challenge hegemonic, mononormative structures of sexuality: passing, bordering and polluting. Deri (2011, 2015) argues polyamorists to embody feeling norms around jealousy and romantic love. She argues jealousy to be an accepted emotion in polyamorous culture, yet how it is dealt with differs from hegemonic monogamous culture.

Current research, theories and concepts surrounding non-monogamy help gain better insight and knowledge on non-monogamy. However, the research is also limited on some points. As most current research focuses on polyamory, research on other forms of non-monogamy is limited. Furthermore, current research puts focus on rules and boundaries surrounding non-monogamous relationships. It is therefore important to gain knowledge that goes beyond the questions about rules and boundaries and to go deeper into the experience of non-monogamous people of romantic love and desire. Lastly, the findings show data from the U.S., the U.K., Canada and Australia. That I present only research and data from English speaking countries is the result of my personal limitations of only speaking English and Dutch. However, my search results show that there is little knowledge on the experience of non-monogamous people in the Netherlands. Therefore, in this thesis I will focus on the experience of people in the Netherlands, identifying as any type of non-monogamy. I will put focus on their experience and managing of their emotions related to sexual and/or romantic relationships.

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Chapter 3:

Proposing a New Monogamy

3.1 An Agglomeration of Emotions

It was 2017, the end of spring. The streets had this warm, blossomy smell; to me this was the smell of the arrival of summer. Steve, a guy I met recently, was coming over to my place to have dinner. We both knew that we would not just have dinner; there had been sexual tension between us and we had spoken about how we were curious to explore that tension. I had spoken to my boyfriend on the phone earlier that day and he knew that Steve was coming over. He also knew about the sexual tension there was between him and me as the three of us had spoken openly about it together before.

As I was preparing dinner, I felt extremely nervous: my legs were restless, I felt my heart pumping in my throat and I could not focus my thoughts. Steve came over and took a shower; he came out of the shower half naked. We had dinner, talked about our lives and I remember my heart pumping in my chest because I felt this strong sexual tension. As we sat on the couch, he suddenly leaned over towards me, touched my cheek and kissed me. My heart stopped pounding for a second and I willingly surrendered to my sexual desires. It was exciting, it was new and arousing, yet somehow it also felt kind of empty. We were horny, yet there was no love or intimacy. After we had sex, we lay in bed together and smoked a cigarette. He left. I remember feeling confused; did I feel guilty? Disappointed? Excited? Satisfied? Neutral? I think I felt it all. I called my boyfriend and asked him to come over to my place; he said he was curious about how our evening was together. Even though we had the arrangement that it was okay to have sex with other people, this was the first time one of us had and I did not know how he would react. I did not want to hurt him, yet I was also excited to share about my new sexual experience.

This experience showed me how exciting yet also difficult it can be to have sexual and/or romantic relationships with multiple people. I experienced so many different emotions at the same time. How to deal with them was new and challenging to me. After I took time to reflect on my emotions and had some long talks with my boyfriend about our fears and desires, it became clearer to me what it was that I longed for in contacts, sexually and/or romantically. Yet still,

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every time I meet someone that I feel attracted or connected to, I experience this agglomeration of contrasting emotions and feelings.

As I analyzed in the previous chapter, there is a gendered difference in the construction of sexual identity and in the importance of following hegemonic romantic love discourses (Overall, 1998; Simon, Eder & Evans, 1992; Klesse, 2006). What has not been researched is whether this gendered difference is existent only in monogamous culture or whether there is also a gendered difference in how non-monogamous people construct their sexual identity and follow hegemonic romantic love discourses. I will aim this chapter at answering the sub-research question: ‘How do non-monogamous men in the Netherlands experience romantic love and desire?’ I will answer this question by analyzing the transcripts of the interviews I conducted with 6 people who identify male and non-monogamous. I transcribed the interviews and used a technique called

coding to categorize the interviews. I analyzed the interviews using these categories and with a

close reading of the transcripts on the interviewees’ emotions and experiences of romantic love and desire. Concepts that were brought up often and appeared important were: honesty,

communication, safety, freedom and identity. I will analyze these in the following sections.

3.2 The Risks of Being Honest

Klesse (2006: 571) argued that honesty is the basic axiom of polyamory. Throughout the

interviews with my male participants, the topic of honesty came up several times. I was sitting in a café with Frank who has an open relationship with a woman who is currently living abroad with her other partner. He argues that in their relationship, they value honesty. “I always want to be open, to be able to tell each other everything, whether that’s about someone else or about my feelings. We just don’t want to keep anything from each other, no matter what that is.” Here, Frank expresses a feeling norm in his relationship: wanting to tell your partner(s) everything. When I ask him whether he ever experienced difficulties in being honest, I notice a different look on his face, he suddenly seems somewhat nervous. After a short silence, he tells me how he has had difficulty telling his partner everything and how that has been a burden to him ever since. He speaks softly when he explains how he was afraid his partner would not understand or would feel hurt when hearing he had had sex with someone. After still not having told her a week later, he felt like he could not tell her anymore, so now he feels like he is stuck to that lie. “I feel guilty and also insecure. (…) Distracting myself (…) helps for a little while, but it comes around three

Non-monogamy and discourses on romantic love and desire : the experiences of non-monogamous people in the Netherlands